


That low door in the wall

by wallyflower



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: And is a recluse, Beauty and the Beast Homage, F/M, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Romance, Severus Snape Lives, magical houses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25164562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wallyflower/pseuds/wallyflower
Summary: One summer, when Hermione Granger asks the recluse Professor Snape for permission to use the library of the Prince estate, he agrees, but refuses to see her during her stay. How does one get to know a man who will not show his face?
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Severus Snape
Comments: 7
Kudos: 58





	That low door in the wall

The house was large: nowhere near as grand or stately as Malfoy Manor, but intimidatingly large all the same. Hermione Granger shifted her weight from foot to foot. The Knight Bus had dropped her off in the general vicinity of the unplottable area, but she had to walk some ways down an empty dirt road before the estate was revealed, ensconced in lush green countryside. There were trees everywhere except on the main road itself. The wall which spanned the length of the estate was dappled with sunshine; in the middle of the wall was an entrance arch. She levitated her bags through, and found herself in a courtyard of no small size. 

She had seen, in an abridged version of Harry’s memories, the derelict state of the tiny house in Cokeworth where Severus Snape had grown up. How odd it must be now, she thought, for him to be in possession of such a large house. The Prince House—she didn’t know if it had a formal name—had a severely symmetrical facade of grey stone, with a small set of steps leading up to large wooden doors, and with each rectangular window charmed to be opaque. There must have once been formal gardens, and even the remains of a fountain, but now the grass was less manicured, though not wild. Some ways from the facade and over the trees she could see what was probably a greenhouse. 

Severus Snape, after his trial for war crimes and subsequent acquittal in 1998, had disappeared from the public eye, with Harry Potter trying in vain to find him and make peace. Harry had thought Snape dead—they all had—and the fact that he was alive was a great relief to Harry and Hermione. She had wondered if, recovered and acquitted, Snape would resume teaching, but he effectively vanished, leaving even Spinner’s End behind, reached neither by her owls nor well-meaning Patronuses. Harry had never been able to express his apologies, Hermione her admiration. 

Hermione understood that he must keep some sort of correspondence with Minerva McGonagall and Madame Pince, the Hogwarts librarian, but on the subject both women remained firmly quiet, and the owls sent from Grimmauld Place to Professor S. Snape were sent back unopened. The next that Harry and Hermione heard of him was a small notice in the Daily Prophet: an obscure Prince uncle had passed, leaving the homestead to the last of the Princes—Severus Snape. 

She hadn’t thought of him recently, not until the name came up when she was looking for magical libraries in conversation with Madam Pince. 

She was interrupted by the opening of the front doors. She realized that she had been staring, somewhat slackjawed, at the property and hurried to the front steps, where she was met by an elderly man with white hair, old fashioned mutton chops and slightly shabby formal robes. He had a worn, tanned face and a closed expression with watery grey eyes. Had he been Muggle, she would have pegged him at eighty years old, but then she was never entirely sure with wizards. He introduced himself as Mr Tilney and asked for her bags before she could offer a handshake.

“Good afternoon,” she said. “And thank you. Is Professor Snape around? I’d like to thank him and say hello. It’s very kind of him to let me stay.” 

Mr Tilney gave her an odd look as he hauled her bags over the doorstep. The entryway was dark, as the windows were covered by dark curtains and the lamps were unlit, but there were appealing landscape paintings on the wall and a large staircase in the middle of the hall. She felt the House’s magic shift around her—it felt like a soft exhale—as it accommodated to her magic. 

Having given up manhandling the bags, Mr Tilney began to levitate them as Hermione trailed after him. “I believe that Master Snape would prefer not to be called by that title, Miss,” he said. “And I don’t believe you will be seeing much of him. He has instructed me to allow you free use of the library, the north wing, and the gardens, but has insisted on his solitude in the south wing, where he asks you not to step foot. You’re to take meals in the second dining room on the ground floor—the only room with green walls, you’ll find—and you’ll be dining alone.” 

Hermione felt somewhat stung, and hoped that her feelings didn’t show in her expression. She followed the manservant up the stairs. She hadn’t expected a welcoming party, given that her relationship with Snape had never been cordial, but she had hoped that he might come to see her, and allow her to deliver the thanks and apologies which were four years overdue and which Harry had never been able to express. 

She had never corresponded with Professor Snape directly. She had been informed through Madame Pince’s owl that she was to be given access to the Prince library, and that she could stay on the estate as long as her project required—a generous offer, and one which had given her hope that her Professor’s feelings may have thawed somewhat over time. She felt acutely disappointed. 

Mr Tilney led her into a beautiful room typical of an English country bedroom two centuries ago. Where the house’s facade had been severe, the room was bright and warm, with walls papered in a delicate blue patterned with gold leaves and flowers. The furniture and linen followed a similar theme. The canopy bed was larger than she was used to at Hogwarts, and a bay window looked out at the grounds of the north facade; the seat beneath had been made into a nook perfect for curling up and reading. Despite herself Hermione was utterly enchanted, and went straight to the bookshelf at the far end of the room. It held, to her further surprise and delight, old editions of Muggle classics. She heard Tilney bustling behind her, banishing her clothes to the closet, and turned to him with a smile. 

“May I ask, who had this room before me? It’s very lovely.” 

Mr Tilney said, in his impassive voice, “No one has occupied this room since I have been in service, Miss. The previous master was a bachelor who passed away when he was well into his hundreds. This room was a seldom used parlor, I believe, and we had it done up prior to your arrival. Is it to your satisfaction?” 

Startled, Hermione could only nod yes as Mr Tilney bowed out of the room and left her to silence, with parting words about meal schedules. 

She let her fingers linger over the books before taking a seat at the window, for the beddings seemed too pretty to rumple. She wished she had the daring to ask if the room had been designed by Snape or by Tilney, or some other unseen wizard or House-elf. She had seen no other manservants. Hermione had expected Snape to employ a House-elf when the house came into his possession, as all old wizarding houses seemed to do, and wondered if some would make their appearance. The house did seem quite well tended for a large home with only one manservant; though not quite manicured and polished to perfection, it was clean and not in any state of great disrepair, like Grimmauld Place had been. 

It made her wonder even more about the house’s owner. He must truly have become a recluse if he couldn’t stomach her company for the minute or so that it would require to make her hellos. She was struck with sudden inspiration. Drawing her wand, she cast a Patronus and was gratified that the house’s magic did not prevent it, as she was afraid it might. Message received, the silvery otter left the room through the cracks in the door as Hermione waited, expectant, for her Professor’s silver doe in answer. 

She was to be disappointed. No ethereal figure wafted through door, but she was startled when the fireplace burst into life, and spat out a white paper crane the size of her palm, which fluttered towards her and lingered in the air expectantly. She stretched her arm out to the crane and its movement stilled—a fine bit of magic. The paper was a folded message in the economical, slanted writing she recognized from several years worth of essays. 

_Any urgent messages may be sent through a lit fireplace. _

_No thanks are necessary._

_S. Snape_

— 

Dinner was not until six o’clock. Having resigned herself to a quite lonely stay, Hermione itched to explore the grounds and the greenhouse hidden temptingly behind the trees, but her priority was the library. 

Hermione was on her third year of the Healer track at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, and before the end of the last term she had approached her professors about a project on the healing of magical scars—a venture with a somewhat vested personal interest on her part, but which was met with seriousness and academic curiosity all the same. Many cosmetic charms and potions existed, but none which could permanently vanish scars inflicted with Dark Magic; it was not a branch of healing magic often explored, since some theorized that a familiarity with Dark Magic was probably necessary. 

If her professors believed that she was undertaking the project for Harry and his famous lightning-shaped scar, she saw no reason to correct them. 

She spent the last weekends of the term visiting magical libraries all over Britain, and had come up with few helpful resources. A letter to Madame Pince had yielded a pinched but helpful response; a few more owls exchanged later found her at Prince House, where Pince was certain she could find texts that were not available at Hogwarts. Pince did ask why Hermione did not attempt to search Malfoy Manor, which was said to have the largest magical library in Britain bar none. Hermione made some excuses which she could not now remember, and Pince did not pursue the inquiry, instead suggesting key words and titles to help in the search. 

The library, according to Mr. Tilney, was on the third floor of the north wing. It did not disappoint. It was at least twice the size of Hogwarts library, and had the advantage of floor to ceiling windows which were invisible from the outside. She wondered if the Princes had always been a small family. Seats were few, being limited to a large table at one end of the room and on the other, a settee in front of a fireplace. There were no portraits of family members; the few paintings were of scenery or flowers, and the walls were paneled in a dark, rich wood. 

The shelves were bursting with books. She found, to her disappointment, that a large part of it seemed not to have been organized. Wandering further to the deep end of the library, however, she found piles of related books in tidy stacks on the floor, tied in twine, and wondered if Professor Snape had been in the process of organizing the library prior to her encroachment. It would be no easy feat to organize a collection accumulated over centuries. 

With no evident system of organization to start with, Hermione decided that she would tackle each shelf systematically. There were no ways to summon books by topic, as she had discovered to her chagrin in previous library searches. She had a total of two months before term began: surely there would be enough time to scour every shelf? Had she more time, she would have offered to organize the library herself, but she suspected that the suggestion would be unwelcome. 

The sun lowered in the sky and the silence began to feel oppressive. She had always thought of herself as liking solitude, but Professor Snape’s reluctance to see her in his own home weighed on her, at odds though it was with the warmth of the welcome in her carefully furnished room and selected books. At six o’clock she had marked her place in the shelves and made her way to the second dining room, which had forest green walls and a higher ceiling than the rest of the floor. She was met there only by Tilney, who disappeared as soon as the courses were set out in front of her—simple fare of vegetables and chicken, with a glass of sweet white wine and a bowl of fruit that Hermione thought probably came from the grounds. The long table could easily have seated thirty people, and she was alone; somewhere in the house, Hermione assumed, Snape was probably sitting at a similar table, also alone. 

***

She couldn’t sleep. It was not that the bed was uncomfortable: the sheets were the finest she had ever slept on, and the pillows were soft and smelled of lavender. She had been given to bouts of insomnia for years and knew when it was time to give up trying to sleep: at some time past one o’clock she sat at the bay window, looking out into the dark world outside, seeing only her reflection by firelight. 

She wasn’t quite sure what possessed her. She tore a page out of a notebook and wrote, 

_You have a very beautiful library._

She folded it carefully into a paper crane, hoping the odd creases wouldn’t betray her clumsiness. She sent it floating gently into the fire and half expected it to be consumed by flame; instead it began to flutter its paper wings, controlled by some unseen magic, and disappeared. 

She wasn’t expecting a response. Her eyes had just begun to droop when a paper crane fluttered toward her and woke her with its soft whisper of movement against her cheek. 

_It is unorganized, but the texts you need might more likely be located in the deep end of the room. Tomorrow you will find those sections marked._

She almost replied, _Do you mean today?_ , but she was distracted by movement outside. On the grounds, a glow in the darkness: the light of a wand, moving parallel to the edges of the house and towards the back. Hermione followed it as much as her windows would allow; when the light disappeared from the view afforded by the window, she scampered to the hallway, where the few windows allowed her to follow the light to the back of the house. It was as she suspected—the greenhouse stood there. 

Hermione stood at the end of her hallway, watching as the greenhouse door opened and a dark figure slipped in. The light from the wand expanded to fill the space. She was utterly enchanted; it was such sophisticated magic, but the wizard made it look easy. The man wasn’t Tilney but Professor Snape. His figure wore no cloak against the evening drafts, and he was just as tall and long limbed as in her memories. She conjured a seat for herself and sat there watching for a long time, unable to quite make out what Professor Snape was doing through the glass, seeing only the outlines of plants and the warm glow of his magic. 

She was awakened only by the sun rising outside the window. Her cheek had left an impression on the pane. Embarrassed, she fled to her room and slept until breakfast. If Tilney had any thoughts on the matter, he said nothing. 

***

It was as he said: by the time Hermione came to the library the next morning, the sections Snape had mentioned, which spanned about forty shelves, were marked with a floating length of ribbon, resembling a cordon. Unlike the fluttering paper cranes, the cordon was perfectly still, and seemed not at all bothered by her prodding. She smiled to herself, finding today’s work rather less oppressive than the day before. She wondered at what time Snape had passed by the library. She fancied she could still feel his magic in the air. By the time twelve o’clock came around she had picked out three books that could be useful, but would require closer reading. 

In the next weeks, Hermione fell into a pattern. She did her library work in the morning, took a break for a lonely lunch, and resumed working until afternoon. At five o’clock she made her way outside, exploring the grounds in which the master of the house had given her free rein to roam, until it was time for dinner. 

For these explorations she saved the Greenhouse for last, feeling that it must be a refuge for Professor Snape, and fearing that it might not open for her; but the first time she approached it and touched the door she felt the magic shift under her fingers, and the entire structure gave a small sigh of magic, as the house had done when she had first entered. 

The Greenhouse made her happy: a solace in days full of quiet, full of green and vibrancy where the rest of her hours were spent poring over books that were interesting enough, but didn’t give her the answers she needed. She felt that she was chasing the end of a string that someone kept tugging beyond her reach. She found comfort in the Greenhouse, where, unlike the library, plants were organized in sound herbological ways: according to sunlight requirements, to interactions; to color; to usefulness as Potions ingredients. It was a personal reflection of the master of the house in a way the library could not yet be. 

The plants were well tended and the flowers were beautiful. After her first day she had noticed, upon returning to her room after breakfast each morning, that a vase of flowers was sitting on the low table beside the canopy bed. They differed by the day, each sweetly beautiful. She tried to catch Tilney—if it was he—putting the flowers in her room, fighting the vain hope that it was Snape who went secretly to her rooms instead; but she was disappointed. The flowers kept coming, and once she braved the Greenhouse she found their parent plants.

In dealing with the plants she was careful not to meddle and solely admired, until one day she found several small plants lined up for repotting, left behind as though the gardener had been abruptly interrupted. She repotted them as best as she remembered from Herbology class, and was gratified to receive this note from the fireplace that evening:

_My thanks for repotting the Verbena._

The notes had become part of her day as well. At first she sent him several in a day to chide him, a gentle rebuke for welcoming a guest without actually welcoming her. But over time she found that she wanted to know so much more about the man who had tormented her in the classroom and yet had turned out to be watching over and her friends all along. She wanted to know what kind of recluse would welcome a guest—a mere acquaintance—into their home and allow such an intrusion for such an extended period of time. She wanted to know what kind of man wouldn’t want to see her but would prepare her rooms with the warmth and attention to detail with which parents prepared their nurseries. 

_Why do you have a copy of The Secret Garden in my room? Did it come with the house?_

_According to Mr Tilney, you’ve discouraged the gardener from stepping foot in the greenhouse. Is all of that your own work?_

_Thank you for cordoning off a section of the library. I have found a total of twelve books for a bibliography, but they were of very low yield. Did Madam Pince tell you about the objective of my project?_

At first the replies came not at all, and Hermione spent the first few days glumly feeling like the only conversation to be had was with the mostly silent Mr Tilney. She could have sent owls, but these would have to be sent from outside the property’s periphery, and besides she had no bird of her own. The property had now owlery, as Tilney explained that both the current master and the one before him had been recluses. Any owl correspondence, of which there was little, could be sent and claimed from the villages nearby. Patronuses she conjured could make it outside the property, but she was wary of using them, as she knew they could be tracked and she had no intention of exposing Snape’s address to the world at large. The Princes of old had been famously reclusive, and three generations down had made the estate unplottable, untraceable to any soul who didn’t have an invite. 

She had resigned herself to a month or so with no conversation until, after her enquiry about her project, a paper crane fluttered to life in the library fireplace. 

_Madame Pince gave me a general idea._

_I have not read all the books I have inherited, but I include here some familiar titles which might be useful._

Below that was a list. In one of the recommended she found not a line or a paragraph, but an entire chapter on the physiology of dark magical scars. It was the closest she had come to a useful source. She continued to give him feedback on her research so far, making him a de facto advisor, and gratified at his brief but helpful responses. 

Her research seemed to indicate that magical scars were not inert, even when the caster perished, and continued to exert small levels of continuous damage and inflammation, which made it impossible for magical scars to heal in quite the same way normal scars did. She was coming to the conclusion that a charm string might be needed to repair the layers of damage simultaneously, but she was still far from any solutions. Still, progress was progress, however slow. 

*** 

Weeks passed, with only Mr. Tilney and the house for companions. She counted the house, for as the days lengthened into summer she began to notice that the house was alive. 

None of the mirrors or portraits ever spoke, and there were no House-elves that she could see. She couldn’t explain it, but over time she felt that the house’s magic—a palpable, benign presence—grew to welcome her. She could only compare it to Grimmauld Place, a house that had seemed to hate her and her blood; she had never spoken of the house’s malign magic, feeling that it was directed only to her as a Muggleborn. Prince House was the complete opposite. 

She felt quite sure that she wasn’t imagining things. A week into her stay, she realized that she no longer needed to adjust the temperature in her bath; it was always perfect from the moment she turned on the taps. The marble floor was never too cold. The fires never needed stoking. The ivory hair combs, which had come with her dresser, combed through her hair in seconds where no magical brushes had ever done before. As she sat down to dinner, her chair moved to meet her. Shoes she had dirtied after a trek to the greenhouse sat in her room the next morning, spotlessly clean. Once when she tripped on the stairs up to third floor, she felt herself steadied by an unseen hand. 

These were small, but very real, almost affectionate things. She wondered if it was Snape’s magic, then chuckled at her own stupidity—surely Snape was not a man to be concerned about a young woman’s bath temperature. 

Still, despite Mr. Tilney’s taciturn kindnesses and the house’s magic, she began to feel acutely lonely. It was the curse of academics everywhere to feel the pressure to be as productive as quickly as possible, and so she felt she could not leave the house for other pursuits: after all, how long would Snape’s patience tolerate her encroachment? 

However, she couldn’t help but feel melancholy. One morning she couldn’t seem to muster the energy to rise from her bed. Instead she lay under the covers, sniffling. Occasionally she leafed through one of the books Professor Snape had left on her shelf— _Mansfield Park_ —but most of the time she stared into nothingness and fell in and out of sleep. 

She was awoken by a soft flutter against her hand. It was one of Snape’s paper cranes again, beautifully and delicately made. Her heart lurched. 

_Are you unwell?_

__Her eyes stung. How could she confess to her Professor, whom she had known to be such a strict and disciplined man, that she was crying in bed because she was lonely and missed her friends and parents? He would think her childish. Imagining his scathing tongue, he thought that he might have once suggested that a crib would better suit her blue-papered room rather than this majestic bed. But she couldn’t confess to an illness. He was after all a Potions Master. She knew enough of his courtesy so far to be sure that he would have worked to provide her with a potion cure._ _

_My apologies, sir. I am not ill, perhaps only tired._

After all, “tired” covered up a multitude of sadnesses. 

_I apologize for the inconvenience to the house and Mr. Tilney. I assure you that I will resume my routine this afternoon._

Hermione received no response, and though she hadn’t expected one, his silence seemed to make the melancholy worse. She burrowed deeper into the covers, waking again only to the soft rattling of porcelain. She sat up quickly, but there was no one in the room. However, on the bedside table there was a tray of tea, freshly made, and what appeared on closer inspection to be lemon cakes. She swallowed against the lump in her throat. Could Professor Snape have known that these were her favorite—how they spoke to her of afternoons in the Burrow, sitting in the sunshine and watching the boys play Quidditch? She tried to think back to times in the Order, to shared meals in Grimmauld Place, and came up with nothing. On her tray were sprigs of verbena—the same one, she knew instinctively, that she had repotted. 

She stayed in bed a little longer afterwards, reading, until she decided that she had wallowed enough. Her mood had lightened considerably, soothed by Snape’s and the house’s attentions. She dressed for lunch, and when she got there, she saw that beside the meal was a stack of books—the very ones she had been planning to pore through today. How could Snape know so much? How much was him, and how much was the house? 

__And if he could be this kind to her, why was she still not allowed to see him?_ _

__***_ _

It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried to go into the south wing. She had been raised to be polite, but was also terribly curious. By this time she had explored all of the north wing and most of the gardens, and tried to peer into the boundary of the south wing. This, she found, was the one place where the house’s magic did not welcome her. Every time she tried to walk down the hall to the south wing, she came to herself and realized that she was walking in the opposite direction. 

It was not a mean or mischievous magic but rather a gentle one. She was glad for Professor Snape that the house, though newly acquired, was eager to obey the wishes of its master, but she did long to see him, and see the home he built for himself in that part of the house. Feeling more desperate for company than usual, she tried the experiment again, with the same outcome. Perhaps she would have to live with the fact that she would spend months in this house without ever meeting its master. 

_Will you not still allow me to thank you in person?_

As usual, she received no reply. 

Shadows lengthened into night and she walked into the dining room. Her heart promptly plummeted to her stomach before soaring. At the head of the long table, directly opposite her place, sat Severus Snape—only it wasn’t Snape, but a life-sized, magical structure of black moving parts coming together to resemble his figure; she stepped closer and realized to her shock and pleasure that the mass was entirely composed of tiny black paper cranes, whose wings fluttered gently. The degree of detail was striking, for Hermione fancied she could make out an expression on the figure’s face—one of trepidation. 

“Are you—are you Professor Snape?” she asked, stopping several paces from him. The figure rose from the chair, and the synchronized movement of what must be thousands of paper cranes was magical to behold. The figure inclined its head. 

“I am not truly here,” the figure said. It was Snape’s voice, hearkening back to years in the classroom; she shivered at the familiarity and savored its warmth. “I am still corporeally in the south wing. But I received your note and understand that you might be wishing for company.” 

Stunned, Hermione couldn’t help the smile that bloomed on her face. It was a small concession, and yet a far more generous one than she had expected from her recluse of a host. “Thank you,” she said with feeling, as she paced back to her place opposite his. When she sat, he sat as well. 

The food appeared on the table as usual. She was torn between self consciousness and fascination, wondering how much he could see her or truly interact with her; could he see her facial expressions? Her hand went to her hair before she stilled it, willing herself to start on the soup. He truly was an extremely powerful wizard, and the depths of his knowledge bewildered her; she could only imagine the string of charms it could have taken to have his facsimile sitting across from her. 

“Charm strings,” she breathed, and realized that she now had the opportunity to exchange some ideas with the man in real time. Tucking into her meal, she proceeded to pick his brain—at first carefully, and then with the joy of a student finding a knowledgeable mentor. 

"I hope you won’t mind my asking, sir, but are you able to perform charm strings with wandless magic?” 

“I am, as you see.”

It was odd to be conversing with a mosaic of cranes but his voice helped to anchor her. 

“It’s amazing,” she couldn’t help but breathe. 

Perhaps it was her imagination, but she thought she saw an embarrassed expression cross the figure’s face. 

“I don’t think it’s anything you can’t achieve with a little practice,” he said after a moment, surprisingly generous. He looked uncomfortable as he said it, as though he were unused to paying compliments. She smiled and speared a potato on her fork. 

“I’m not entirely sure about that, but I would be willing to try,” she offered. “I’m beginning to theorize that the solution I’m looking for lies in a charm string like this one, but it would probably be less complex than what you’ve achieved.” 

“Are you operating on the permanent inflammation model?” 

“Yes! If I could find a way to neutralize the magic and heal each layer of skin and scar tissue simultaneously, I think it could work.” 

“Older scars, with more layers and more fibrosis, would then be more difficult to manage,” he said, echoing her very thoughts on the subject. 

She looked then at her arm—at the mark there that had scarred her since her visit to Malfoy Manor. A quick glance that she hoped he hadn’t noticed. It seemed too much for him to know about this, too. “I wish I had started studying this sooner,” she said quietly. 

There was silence for some time then, filled only with the clinking of her cutlery on porcelain, which seemed to Hermione to be embarrassingly loud. 

He cleared his throat. “I have several references on charm-stringing that you might find useful,” he said. “I will send you a list in the morning.” 

“Would you?” she said, feeling hope that, at some point, this might lead to him teaching her. Books were one thing; to be taught by one of the most powerful wizards in Britain was another. 

“I do not think I have Professor Flitwick’s extensive expertise on the subject,” he seemed to backtrack a little, “but I do confess to dabbling in spellwork.” She suspected that he knew about Harry’s possession, once, of the book of the Half Blood Prince, and she smiled at Snape’s figure, as though it were a funny secret between them. 

“So much for foolish wand waving,” she chided gently, and for the first time she heard him laugh—a short, full laugh in his rich voice. She imagined that she saw the paper crane man’s eyes crinkle, his mouth smile wide. 

*** 

The crane man never made an appearance again, but something shifted between Hermione and the master of Prince house. Perhaps he was sensitive to the sadness that had been steadily growing inside her. Where before there had been loneliness and stretches of quiet, now there was anticipation and laughter, because she and Professor Snape began to exchange notes several times a day. Sometimes they came through the fireplace, as the first paper cranes had; sometimes they seemed to float down from the ceiling to alight on her nose or her hair. When she was in the greenhouse she sometimes found messages written in the tiniest writing on flower petals. She wondered again how much of his magic was amplified by the house; being inside it was a magical education in itself. 

At first she had confined her inquiries to her research, fearing that she might scare him off with anything too personal, but eventually she found that he responded even to her thanks for, and musings about, the books he had left in her room. He never did answer what prompted him to decorate her room in that way, or what prompted the choice of books; but he seemed to be a voracious reader himself, and was able to talk at write about fiction. His humor was dry, but considerate, and always unfailingly polite to her. 

They took turns poking fun at the heroes and heroines in her book. At one point he expressed an interest in Jane Austen, and she learned, to her wonderment, that he liked _Persuasion_ best of those novels, though he hadn’t included it in the selection in her room. Perhaps he had it in his? That night she lay in bed, awake far longer than she should have been, thinking about him in his room on the opposite end of the great house, thumbing through _Persuasion_ , thinking, perhaps, of her. Did he wear waistcoats like Professor Slughorn and other landed country gentlemen did in her books? Did he wear a version of his teacher’s robes? 

She thrilled at small proofs of his existence in the large house: a pair of extremely muddy boots left outside the greenhouse after a night of sudden rain. The shelf with his gardening tools on them. One time he had left there a pair of gloves. One time she chanced upon Mr. Tilney carrying a tray of tea that was not for her. 

Perhaps it was both loneliness and curiosity at first. He was one of the teachers she had most admired, and she had suspected long before his near-death that his abilities were not quite used to their full potential at Hogwarts. His accomplishments, however hidden from the world at large, proved themselves: the man could actually _fly_ , had been inventing potions and spells from childhood. She wondered what such a man would want to do now that he was free of his ties to the Dark Lord and Hogwarts. 

She also wondered what he was truly like. It had occurred to her, in many repeated musings over the years, that he had lived those years in the war in a state of constant stress, and that they had been watching a man do a consistent, flawless balancing act for years. How odd, how refreshing and how wonderful to find that the same man who used to blast rosebushes in the Hogwarts gardens turned out to be a quite genteel person, who liked regency fiction and gardening. 

Six weeks into her stay at Prince House, when she realized that the thing she most looked forward to in the day was receiving Snape’s first note, she thought that perhaps she was in trouble. 

**Author's Note:**

> Much of my writing revolves around themes of appearances--concealed, altered, used to deceive or to heal or to hide--and this is the latest product of years worth of musing. The Harry Potter fandom lends itself especially well to these meditations since appearances can be changed with a potion or with a charm. 
> 
> This is a clear homage to iterations of the Beauty and the Beast fairytale. 
> 
> The title should be recognizable to any admirer of Evelyn Waugh.


End file.
